Telekinesis, and baleful transposition. Telekinesis is an old favorite, of course, but what i discovered last night is that a kobold wizard being threatened by ghosts casting telekinesis can grapple said ghosts (since it is a force effect) quite effectively :) And Baleful Transposition (Spell Comp) lets you swap any 2 critters on the boards position, very useful for getting to places you prolly aren't supposed to be, and making sure the MBEG gets flanked good and early. Also good for getting back out of said places when the BBEG comes through the doorway you were inspecting :) So what are your favs and why?
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Irian's Light - Cleric 3 - ray (higher level becomes rays) that heal 2d8, or do 2d8 damage to undead. Nice to have ranged healing mixed with undead bashing.
Furnace within - Effectively fireburst, but with a mindset effect so you do 1 point of fire damage with every attack until you use it, only dwarven, and very dwarven
Color spray - A real "I win" spell at low level
Flaming sphere - also called soccer ball of flaming doooOOOoooOOOooommmm! Especially cool maximized
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I always liked True Strike but since Duskblades came about I love that spell (Quickened true strike, followed by a full power attack with a 2-handed weapon= I hit for lots of hurty-hurt!)
I also love Touch of Idiocy, especially against animals. (also fun to dimension hop next to a bad guy caster and channel one of those through you melee attack, if you are a Duskblade, once again)
Ray of enfeeblement(I love that you can crit with this!) and magic missile are up there too.
FH
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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My Battle Sorcerer likes Benign trasposition. So does our slow moving fighter. I move 30 feet, my pseudodragon moves 50, then I swap him with our fighter. Useful when it gives the fighter a full attack.
I've also decided I like Acid Rain. as a battlefield control spell. Melf's acid arrow and orb of force are both good anti-caster spells too.
My wife loves to play a caster who can cast alter self into a creature that can get somewhere the heavily armored, slow moving tank cannot and then cast benign transposition as a sort of 'surprise' to the bad guys. Then the rest of the party has to hurry up and get there before things get bad. This has proven very effective tactically though there is some risk.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I always liked True Strike but since Duskblades came about I love that spell (Quickened true strike, followed by a full power attack with a 2-handed weapon= I hit for lots of hurty-hurt!)
I also love Touch of Idiocy, especially against animals. (also fun to dimension hop next to a bad guy caster and channel one of those through you melee attack, if you are a Duskblade, once again)Ray of enfeeblement(I love that you can crit with this!) and magic missile are up there too.
FH
Touch of Idiocy is a penalty, so it won't drop animals below 1.
RoE is a penalty as well, most rulings I've seen say that it doesn't double on a crit. YRMV
Now Ray of Stupidity specifically does intelligence damage, so it does double.
I'm reluctant to use shivering touch, because it's too good, but if we fight fire giants I'll be more than happy to. Cold based dex damage X 2 vs fire types? Yes please.
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Touch of Idiocy is a penalty, so it won't drop animals below 1.
RoE is a penalty as well, most rulings I've seen say that it doesn't double on a crit. YRMV
Now Ray of Stupidity specifically does intelligence damage, so it does double.
I'm reluctant to use shivering touch, because it's too good, but if we fight fire giants I'll be more than happy to. Cold based dex damage X 2 vs fire types? Yes please.
Huh, didn't know that about ToI, guess I been getting away with animal cruelty!
I've seen a bunch of discussion on "The worlds most famous RPG"'s current owner's site that has usually ended with RoE being able to crit, so my group has ruled that way.Where is Ray of Stupidity from? I think I want it.
FH
Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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My favorites have always been Otto's Irresistable Dance and Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter. All it takes is one missed save, and your fearsome enemy is ripe for attack AND looks the fool!
And, of course, a creative use of Command is always a lot of fun...
My favorites have always been Otto's Irresistable Dance and Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter. All it takes is one missed save, and your fearsome enemy is ripe for attack AND looks the fool!
And, of course, a creative use of Command is always a lot of fun...
Tasha's does rock. One time, my party was in a tree house, resting overnight, and of course, the bad guys invade the village. 3 come into the tree house, and it quickly become apparent they are more than a match for us physically. So my enchanter starts hittting them one by one with tasha's while my barbarian picks them up and chucks them out of the tree :) Good times...
Page 86 (top left corner) of the Complete Arcane states that rays which inflict penalties cannot be doubled on a critical, and goes on to give RoE as an example.
Doesn't it say that instead of doubling it does degative damage? I don't have access to the box at the moment.
Telekinesis, and baleful transposition. Telekinesis is an old favorite, of course, but what i discovered last night is that a kobold wizard being threatened by ghosts casting telekinesis can grapple said ghosts (since it is a force effect) quite effectively :) And Baleful Transposition (Spell Comp) lets you swap any 2 critters on the boards position, very useful for getting to places you prolly aren't supposed to be, and making sure the MBEG gets flanked good and early. Also good for getting back out of said places when the BBEG comes through the doorway you were inspecting :) So what are your favs and why?
I assume that Baleful Transposition can be used on two allies as well and they could not bother with the save so it works as a Beign Transposition as well. IS this true I don't have the book in front of me.
Yeah, baleful is a level higher than benign, and affects any 2 critters on the board. Its a will save, so you need to warn your mates you're about to do it. Which I failed to do last night, but I WAS transposing myself with what appeared to tbe the bruiser of the opposing party. He was in my way :)
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I posted about it once before on these boards, but Tiny Hut is a favorite of mine. With one casting you get:
* significant protection from external elemental effects
* total concealment (makes arrows/bolts, magic missiles, rays, lightning bolts, acid arrows useless or lowers their effectiveness against those inside)
* allows "concealed camping", lowering wandering encounter chances (if the DM uses FR concealed camping rules)
* fast casting time, long duration, no expensive components needed
* can be colored to match the sky, so a flying/levitating wizard has a huge hide bonus, giving effective invisibility while airborne
* can be combined with Secure Shelter (the Shelter fits inside the Hut) for a hidden, all-weather fortress
* can be used to block line of sight in corridors
* blocks gust of wind, sleet and other simple weather spells
* can be made dark inside allowing mage to suddenly darken it if seeing foes enter without light.
* can be readily replicated by silent image or other illusion spells, allowing illusionist to create decoy huts
Yeah, I like the spell...
It is nice, but I barred evocations for this guy :( Secure Shelter helped us get a good nights rest in the cave though. That leomund was a smart guy :)
Otiluke's resilient sphere is awesome. You can use it to seal off some mook or BBEG to be dealt with later, thus making it battlefield control. Alternately, you can drop one over yourself (and/or one or more of your party members) and buff like crazy without interruption, then pop out and wreak havoc. Once, my whole group huddled inside one while facing a vampire and some wererats, and killed everything in about a round and a half when they came out of it.
Another nice one is to lock the party's monk in a sphere with an enemy mage.
And finally, there are creative uses of the spell. I've seen one strategy where an enemy ran into a continuous spell effect (i.e., summon swarm, stinking cloud) and then a resilient sphere was dropped on him, trapping him inside the nastiness. This is particularly brutal with cloudkill, acid fog, and incendiary cloud.
Another nice one is to lock the party's monk in a sphere with an enemy mage.
O.o
Ow! Can we say "flurry of blows" class? Yes we can! :D
Two men enter, one man leaves!!!!
Two men enter, one man leaves!!!
I like it :)
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Page 86 (top left corner) of the Complete Arcane states that rays which inflict penalties cannot be doubled on a critical, and goes on to give RoE as an example.
Another reason I hate WotC. The whole "we can change anything we want by changing rules whenever we want" attitude. I don't own Complete Arcane and back when I looked for an answer(before Complete Arcane) the general concensus on the boards was that it worked.
My bad, sorry.FH
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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All the vigor spells (lesser, mass lesser, greater, etc). They essentially give fast healing. Combined with the Augment Healing Feat, and you have some nice buff spells for fighter types.
Note that you only get the benefit from Augment Healing once with vigor spells, not every round.
I wasn't aware of the RoE sidebar that appeared in Complete Arcane either. Prior to this rule change, I'm fairly certain that WotC validated that rays could crit*, and thus the ability penalty RoE dealt could be doubled.
My favorite spell is probably Destruction: I like save or die spells. This save or die spell does damage even against a save, so it isn't necessarily all-or-nothing. Plus, on a failed save, it destroys its target utterly, making a return appearance expensive at the very least.
Obscuring Mist is probably my next favorite spell. Keeps my mages/druids alive at lower levels.
*On an unrelated note, I am slowly moving through the new Star Wars Saga Edition game book and noticed that feats featuring an improvement on critical hits are literally titled "XXXXX CRIT". I thought that was a strange decision to truncate the word critical to crit. I'm probably making a mountain out of a mole hill when I say that I find the decision somewhat unagreeable, but there it is.
I love Maze; nothing takes a noncastor out of a fight quite like it.
And of course the dispel magic spells are awesome.
Re: Ray of Enfeeblement and rays in general. Rays (and touch spells as a whole) can score critical hits, provided they deal some form of damage (i.e., scorching ray, or even disintegrate, as frightening as that is). Ray of Enfeeblement afflicts its target with a penalty, however, not damage. Therefore, it cannot "go critical." It's debatable as to whether or not the wording is "penalty" to explain the short duration (since damage or drain would last a whole lot longer than 1 minute), and the inability to crit is simply a consequence, or if the inability to get critical hits was an intentional part of the spell's wording.
Either way, it's probably not a huge deal if you allow Ray of Enfeeblement to score critical hits. As good as it is, the caster isn't going to be slinging it every round, and rays only rarely, rarely get criticals anyway. Thus, you could allow this house rule and it probably wouldn't come up for years and years.
Yeah, now I remember reading (FAQ perhaps?) about how penalty's cannot crit. Hmmm, this is what happens when you have hundreds of exceptions and a bad memory. :)
Transmute rock to mud. Guaranteed to annoy the vain, slow down melee warriors, and great for battlefield manipulation (just add bull rush). Also fun when used in caverns to dump mud on opponents.
Rays (and touch spells as a whole) can score critical hits, provided they deal some form of damage (i.e., scorching ray, or even disintegrate, as frightening as that is)...I critted on a maximized disintegrate once. It was sick and wrong.
Carry on.
... just... ow....
My favourite is probably hesitate and the spell I dislike the most (because its my players favourite) is solid fog.
... just... ow....I hit a PC with it, too. 480 damage in one flick of the wrist. He was a rogue. After that spell, he wasn't anymore.
That's even more amazing! It would kind of be wasted, in a way, on an NPC, since it's assumed they're going to die anyway. But on a PC- that'll bring tears to their eyes!
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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That's even more amazing! It would kind of be wasted, in a way, on an NPC, since it's assumed they're going to die anyway. But on a PC- that'll bring tears to their eyes!
Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I annouced after it had struck to the player:
"This is a maximized spell, just so you're aware."
"I hate you so much. What is the save DC?"
"24."
"That's not so bad. I only need a 9 or better."
"Roll."
*rolls a 5*
*DM cackles, player hangs his head in shame, character turns to dust*
Another favourite spell is disrupting hand. Bopping the mage or cleric in the nose every time they try and cast a spell is fun for the whole family (Ok actually its only fun for the DM, but thats what counts).
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Another favourite spell is disrupting hand. Bopping the mage or cleric in the nose every time they try and cast a spell is fun for the whole family (Ok actually its only fun for the DM, but thats what counts).
heh readied Orb of Force does wonders for that.
DM: Ok, cleric is casting a spell
Me (Reaching for a d20): What's his touch AC?
DM: 13, why?
Me: Readied action, remember? Orb of Force coming on line. (Rolls, hits) 42 points of damage.
DM (We'd never used the readied spell rules before): OK, didn't drop him, what's the DC of the Concentration check?
Me: (Double checks the PHB) Um, 52?
DM: *censored profanity lasting about 10 seconds* OK, the flame strike doesn't work.
Next round
DM: OK, he's casting defencively
Me: Orb of force! (Yelled anime style) Crits, 72 points of damage.
Other player: *snickers* that's a DC 82 concentration check, Tony.
I'm just worried for when he remembers to use readied spells against us. Hopefully I'll have Ray deflection up :D
There's an item in the Item Compendium that gives improved critical to all your ranged spells. I want!
Offensive spells that got a lot of love in my last campaign:
Disintegrate, delayed blast fireball, orb of force, bolt of glory, fugue, prismatic orb.
Defensive spells that got love: greater anticipate teleport, death ward, rary's telepathic bond, benign transposition, moment of prescience, inspirational boost, heroes' feast, true seeing.
I have grown a genuine fondness for disintegrate.
This isn't my favorite spell, per se (I'm the sneaky rogue of the group), but it certainly is well loved by our arcanist. First you need an image of the PC - Daisy is a slight halfling woman who tends to dress and play at being a human girl child. She finds it leads to people underestimating her - especially considering she's a bad ass evoker with a penchant for making things explode. The character came into the campaign late (15th level or so) and by our house rules she had the "standard" 15th level cash to spend on whatever she wanted, but no one single item could be more than half her cash. What should cost just under half her gold? - a Rod of Maximization. Three maximized spells up to sixth level means she pretty much always maximizes disintegrate. She likes leaving behind little piles of dust. The best part is, the DM allowed that she had it crafted to look like a giant gerber daisy. :-)
She's learning Otto's Irresistible Dance as soon as she's able just so she can use the phrase "Dance monkey dance!" at the game table. We love our cute little tactical nuke.
When I decided to have Strahd go for the kill in my Expedition to Castle Ravenloft campaign I switched out some of his spells. The most interesting spell I gave him was one from the Book of Vile Darkness that tears off the target's hand and attacks the target with it, but the spell failed. The spell that did work and was the beginning of the end for the PC's was wall of limbs from the Spell Compendium. It served to split up the party, grapple a couple people, and caused a healthy amount of damage. The spell wasn't exactly deadly, but it disrupted the party so much that it has become one of my favorite spells.
And Baleful Transposition (Spell Comp) lets you swap any 2 critters on the boards position, very useful for getting to places you prolly aren't supposed to be, and making sure the MBEG gets flanked good and early. Also good for getting back out of said places when the BBEG comes through the doorway you were inspecting :) So what are your favs and why?
At some point I was thinking about a paladin multiclassing to a sorcerer...most teleport-type spells don't have somatic components so it would be possible to cast them while in any armor, and since most of them are completely carte blanche when it comes to usefulness, there is potential for all kinds of interesting things...Simple effect usable in many situations. Baleful Transposition is indeed very amusing spell...
But so far I haven't managed to put the plan in work and I know DM would hate that character :)
Shadow Conjuration has always been a favorite of mine, just for its sheer versitility. Battlefield control, extra combatants, and if you're a bard or have the right feats, illusionary healing is just humorous.
Between this and the nasty DM tricks thread, I am getting SOOOO many ideas for my next story arc :)
Re: Ray of Enfeeblement and rays in general. Rays (and touch spells as a whole) can score critical hits, provided they deal some form of damage (i.e., scorching ray, or even disintegrate, as frightening as that is). Ray of Enfeeblement afflicts its target with a penalty, however, not damage. Therefore, it cannot "go critical." It's debatable as to whether or not the wording is "penalty" to explain the short duration (since damage or drain would last a whole lot longer than 1 minute), and the inability to crit is simply a consequence, or if the inability to get critical hits was an intentional part of the spell's wording.
Either way, it's probably not a huge deal if you allow Ray of Enfeeblement to score critical hits. As good as it is, the caster isn't going to be slinging it every round, and rays only rarely, rarely get criticals anyway. Thus, you could allow this house rule and it probably wouldn't come up for years and years.
Not to re-hash this whole thing again (but alas I am), but negative energy rays like enervation can crit (dealing twice the amount of dice in negative levels), right?
I find exceptions like this kind of frustrating due to inconsistencies for play balance purposes.
Re: Ray of Enfeeblement and rays in general. Rays (and touch spells as a whole) can score critical hits, provided they deal some form of damage (i.e., scorching ray, or even disintegrate, as frightening as that is). Ray of Enfeeblement afflicts its target with a penalty, however, not damage. Therefore, it cannot "go critical." It's debatable as to whether or not the wording is "penalty" to explain the short duration (since damage or drain would last a whole lot longer than 1 minute), and the inability to crit is simply a consequence, or if the inability to get critical hits was an intentional part of the spell's wording.
Either way, it's probably not a huge deal if you allow Ray of Enfeeblement to score critical hits. As good as it is, the caster isn't going to be slinging it every round, and rays only rarely, rarely get criticals anyway. Thus, you could allow this house rule and it probably wouldn't come up for years and years.
Not to re-hash this whole thing again (but alas I am), but negative energy rays like enervation can crit (dealing twice the amount of dice in negative levels), right?
I find exceptions like this kind of frustrating due to inconsistencies for play balance purposes.
Uhm, I think it can. Not sure. Can someone give an official citation on this?
If so... damn. Just damn!
enervation can critical for 2d4 negative levels (Complete Arcane, p. 86 again).
Damn! Just /damn! (especially with energy drain)
...and if my memory serves me (which it hasn't lately), there is no save against enervation or energy drain.
So why does Ray of Enfeeblement get special treatment? Probably because its a first level spell that should have been a second level spell.
Doom scarabs from the PHB II. Area of effect, Will save (not Ref) for half damage, and gain temporary hp for each opponent's SR you overcome.